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Wednesday, October 01, 2014

October is Nanowrimo PREP month!

by Alexandra SokoloffIt's October first, and you know what that means....It's Nanowrimo PREP month!

I always do a brainstorming and story structure review series in October, and continue throughout November with prompts and encouragement, based on my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbooks and workshops.

Because if you’re going to put a month aside to write 50,000 words, doesn’t it make a little more sense to have worked out the outline, or at least an overall roadmap, before November 1?

This year I've had an attack of fall housekeeping, which should benefit all you readers of this blog.- First, I've created a separate page on the blog where I'll collect the Nanowrimo posts in order as we work our way through Nanowrimo Prep in October. (There's now a tab on the nav bar at the top of the blog that says Nanowrimo!)- And for those who want to skip ahead, I've also put up a Table of Contents page (the tab says How to Use this Blog) and linked some of the major posts in a useful order.- Of course, all the information on this blog and more, including full story structure breakdowns of various movies, is available in the workbooks. Any format, just $3.99 and $2.99.

If you're a romance writer, or have a strong love plot or subplot in your novel or script, then Writing Love: Screenwriting Tricks II is an expanded version of the first workbook with a special emphasis on love stories.

- And finally, I'm always up for suggestions - what would YOU like me to cover in this Nano prep month?---------------------So let's get this party started with The Master List.

The first thing I always have my workshop students do is make a Master List of their favorite movies in the genre they're writing in.

And you guys who have done this master list before, remember, it helps to do a new one every time you sit down with a new project, and brainstorm a list of movies and books that are structurally similar to your new project.

It’s very simple: in order to write
stories like the ones that move you, you need to look at the specific stories
that affect you and figure out what those authors and filmmakers are doing to
get the effect they do.

Every genre has its own structural
patterns and its own tricks — screenwriter Ryan Rowe says it perfectly: “Every
genre has its own game that it’s playing with the audience.”

For example: with a mystery, the
game is “Whodunit?” You are going to toy with a reader or audience’s
expectations and lead them down all kinds of false paths with red herrings so
that they are constantly in the shoes of the hero/ine, trying to figure the
puzzle out.

But with a romantic comedy or
classic romance, there’s no mystery involved. 99.99% of the time the hero and
heroine are going to end up together. The game in that genre is often to show,
through the hero and heroine, how we are almost always our own worst enemies in
love, and how we throw up all kinds of obstacles in our own paths to keep
ourselves from getting what we want.

So if you’re writing a story like It’s A Wonderful Life, it’s not going to
help you much to study Apocalypse Now.
A story that ends with a fallen hero/ine is not going to have the same story
shape as one that ends with a transcended hero/ine (although if both kinds of
films end up on your list of favorite stories, you might find one is the other
in reverse. That’s why you need to make your own lists!)

Once you start looking at the games
that genres play, you will also start to understand the games that you most love, and that you want to play
with your readers and audience.

I’m primarily a thriller writer, and
my personal favorite game is: “Is it supernatural or is it psychological?” I
love to walk the line between the real and unreal, so I am constantly creating
story situations in which there are multiple plausible explanations for the
weird stuff that’s going on, including mental illness, drug-induced
hallucinations, and outright fraud. That’s why my master list for any book or
script I write will almost always include The
Haunting of Hill House and The
Shining, both classic books (and films) that walk the line between the
supernatural and the psychological.

But what works for me structurally
is not necessarily going to do it for you.

If you take the time to study and
analyze the books and films that have had the greatest impact on you,
personally, or that are structurally similar to the story you’re writing, or
both, that’s when you really start to master your craft. Making the lists and
analyzing those stories will help you brainstorm your own, unique versions of
scenes and mega-structures that work in the stories on your master list; it
will help you figure out how your particular story will work. And doing this
analysis will embed story structure in your head so that constructing a story
becomes a fun and natural process for you.

Another great benefit of making the
master list is that it helps you “brand” yourself as an author. Agents,
editors, publishing houses, publicists, sales reps, bookstores, reviewers,
media interviewers, librarians, and most importantly, your readers — all of
these people want to be able to categorize you and your books. You need to be
able to tell all of these people exactly what it is you write, what it’s
similar to, and why it’s also unique. That’s part of your job as a professional
author.

So the first order of business is to
make your master list.

And I encourage you to splurge on a
nice big beautiful notebook to work in. We writers live so much in our heads
it’s important to give ourselves toys and rewards to make the work feel less
like work, and also to cut down on the drinking.

> ASSIGNMENT: Go to an office or
stationery store or shop on line and find yourself a wonderful notebook to work
in.

> ASSIGNMENT: List ten books and
films that are similar to your own story in structure and/or genre (at least
five books and three movies if you’re writing a book, at least five movies if
you’re writing a script.).

Or – if you’re trying to decide on
the right project for you to work on, then make a list of ten books and films
that you wish you had written!

ANALYZING YOUR LIST

Now that you’ve got your list, and a
brand-new notebook to keep it in, let’s take a look at what you’ve come up
with.

That's off the top of my head, just
to illustrate the point I'm about to make – and not necessarily specific to the
book I’m writing right now. On another day my list could just as easily include
Hamlet, The Fountainhead, Apocalypse Now,
The Treatment, Alice in Wonderland, Philadelphia Story, and Holiday Inn.

All of those examples are what I
would call perfectly structured stories. But that list is not necessarily going
to be much help for someone who's writing, you know, romantic comedy. (Although
the rom coms of George Cukor, Preston Sturges, and Jane Austen, and Shakespeare
are some of my favorite stories on the planet, and my master list for a
different story might well have some of those stories on it).

Okay, what does that list say about
me?

• It’s heavily weighted toward
thrillers, fantasy, horror, and the supernatural. In fact, even the two more
realistic stories on the list, Jaws
and Silence of the Lambs, are so
mythic and archetypal that they might as well be supernatural – they both have
such overwhelming forces of nature and evil working in them.

• It’s a very dark list, but it
includes two films and a book that are some of the happiest endings in film and
literary history. I read and watch stories about the battle between good and
evil… but if you’ll notice, except for the Ira Levin books, I do believe in
good triumphing.

• The stories are evenly split
between male protagonists and female protagonists, but except for Jaws, really, women are strong and
crucial characters in all of them.

And guess what? All of the above is
exactly what I write.

A lot of the stories on your own
list will probably be in one particular genre: thriller, horror, mystery,
romance, paranormal, historical, science fiction, fantasy, women’s fiction, YA
(Young Adult, which is really more of an umbrella for all genres). And odds are
that genre is what you write.

(If you’re not clear on what your
genre is, I suggest you take your master list to the library or your local
independent bookstore and ask your librarian or bookseller what genre those
books and films fall into. These people are a writer’s best friends; please use
them, and be grateful!)

But there will also always be a few
stories on your list that have nothing to do with your dominant genre, some
complete surprises, and those wild cards are sometimes the most useful for you
to analyze structurally. Always trust something that pops into your head as
belonging on your list. The list tells you who you are as a writer. What you
are really listing are your secret thematic preferences. You can learn volumes
from these lists if you are willing to go deep.

Every time I teach a story structure
class it’s always fantastic for me to hear people’s lists, one after another,
because it gives me such an insight into the particular uniqueness of the
stories each of those writers is working toward telling.

You need to create your list, and
break those stories down to see why
they have such an impact on you - because that's the kind of impact that you
want to have on your readers. My list
isn't going to do that for you. Our tastes and writing and themes and turn-ons
are too different - even if they're very similar.

So try it:

> ASSIGNMENT: Analyze your master
list of stories. What does the list say about the stories, themes and
characters that most appeal to you?